Methods for Selecting Road Investment

Written by the PIARC Economic and Finance Committee, the paper is concerned with public improvements and the relevant methods of investment appraisal. The aim is not to set down a rigorous appraisal methodology but to provide guidance to enable each decision maker to adopt appropriate methods within the context of the individual problem faced. The first chapter establishes the general context of decision making. The following two chapters describe the two main types of method available; single [...]

Economic Evaluation Methods for Road Projects in PIARC Member Countries

A working group of Committee C9 on Financing and Economic Evaluation has prepared this report. It was conducted as a questionnaire survey of all member countries of C9 in 1997, supplemented with information from other available sources e.g. publications and reports. The data contained in this report are as of 1st October 1997 unless otherwise stated in graphs and tables. This report gives a brief description of the major methods that may be applied to evaluate road projects, then summarizes the [...]

The Role of Economic and Socio-economic Models in Road Management

In a context where the Public Administrations experience a stronger and stronger demand on social policy, and where road budgets, especially road maintenance budgets, tend to be tightened or even scaled back, the economic evaluation - and optimization - of road maintenance actions and/or policy becomes a recurrent requirement. There is, therefore, a growing need for methods and tools to meet this requirement. The development of such tools implies a number of technical obstacles, including: [...]

Whole Life Costing of Roads - Flexible Pavements

The objective of the Road Technology Topic Area set out in the 1995-1999 PIARC Strategic Plan is "to improve the provision, maintenance and performance of road infrastructure in accordance with international best practice". One of the essential requirements to meet this objective is a means of assessing the relative merits of the various forms of construction and of the maintenance processes. This can be done by considering the costs and the performance of the materials and processes used over an [...]

Whole-Life Costing of Roads - Concrete Roads

In 1996, PIARC Technical Committee on Concrete Roads (C7) created a subcommittee on the theme "Whole Life Costing (WLC)". On the basis of a broad view over the subject, based on the existing WLC systems in Sweden and UK (COMPARE), two questionnaires were drawn and issued in 1997. The result of the questionnaires shows that many countries are very interested in this subject, and also that many countries use whole life costing as a basis for decisions about road design and guidelines for the national [...]